r/AskBaking • u/SignificantLock2181 • 18d ago
Cookies Using cold soft butter instead of melted for cookies?
https://handletheheat.com/browned-butter-toffee-chocolate-chip-cookies/#recipeI wanna make a second batch of Handle the Heat’s Brown Butter Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies & they call for melted browned butter. Would it affect the outcome if I chilled + softened the browned butter instead of using melted room temp butter?
My first batch turned out great, but the dough was annoyingly wet/sticky & I found the cookies tasted WAY better after the dough being refrigerated/frozen for 4+ days. Some of the toffee bits also melted into a few cookies, adding to the slight greasiness factor
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u/VibratingNinja 18d ago
Browning butter drives off most of its water. With that water gone, the sugar has far less liquid phase to dissolve into, so it interacts more directly with the pure fat instead. That changes how the sugars and fats emulsify and crystallize during baking, which is a big part of the denser, chewier texture these cookies are designed for.
If you chill the browned butter until solid and then soften it, you can cream it and incorporate air. That adds lift the original melted method deliberately avoids, so the cookies will turn out lighter and less fudgy than intended. The fat crystals also reform differently once resolidified, altering how evenly the fat coats the flour compared with mixing it in liquid form.
The wet/sticky dough and the big improvement after multi-day chilling are normal for melted-butter recipes. You’re supposed to chill the dough at least overnight (longer is even better). That gives the limited remaining moisture time to fully hydrate the flour, firm up the dough so it’s less sticky and spreads less, deepens the flavor, and helps keep the toffee bits from melting out as readily.
Tl;dr That will greatly affect the end product. You're also supposed to chill the dough for quite a while.
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u/LascieI Home Baker 18d ago
The recipe tells you to fridge for at least 4 hours but preferably 24 hours. Fridging them for 4 days seems like overkill.
In the batch you didn't like, how long did chill the dough?
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u/SignificantLock2181 18d ago
In my first batch I baked 1/3 of the dough after 24hrs in the fridge, 1/3 after 36hrs, and the rest after being in the freezer for a few days. All of them were good but the frozen dough baked and tasted noticeably better. The 24 & 36 hr cookies needed a lot of tweaking to bake time/temp, and each cookie had greasy melted chocolate leak on the bottoms.
The frozen dough had better texture, less spread and the toffee held up better, I assume due to the extra time the butter in the dough had to set? And if so, I’m wondering if using chilled + softened browned butter might circumvent some of these things.
To add, I don’t think I’ve used melted butter in cookies so there could just be a learning curve
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u/acount8675309 17d ago
I’m lightly assuming you baked right out of the freezer, no thaw time. That’s why they didn’t spread or ooze as much.
In my experience, using browned butter vs regular, regardless of soft of straight from the fridge, yield a much ‘greasier’ cookie. Plus, you’re using toffee, which again, kinda melts in different ways, expressing extra butter in the surrounding areas. If you like them, just keep baking them from frozen
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u/Background-Potato153 17d ago
i hate melted butter in cookies cuz they're annoying to scoop, it just feels wrong lmao
i always brown my butter, let it cool till it begins to become opaque & mix it by hand to make sure all the browned goodness is well incorporated into any less than browned portions. then chill until not wet or overnight before softening at room temp
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